“'It will be too late, dear cousin, to refuse me; for when this reaches you, I shall be already on the way to your mountains.--Are they mountains, by the way?--So then make up your mind to my visit, with the best grace you can. I should fill this letter with news of all our friends and acquaintances here, but that I rely upon these very narratives to amuse you when we meet,--not that there is anything very strange or interesting to recount. People marry, and quarrel, and make love, fight, go in debt, and die, in our enlightened age, without the slightest advancement on the wisdom of our ancestors; and except that we think very highly of ourselves, and very meanly of all others, I do not see that we have made any considerable progress in our knowledge. “'I am all eagerness to see you once again. Are you altered?--I hope and trust not. Neither fatter nor thinner, nor paler, nor more carnation, than I knew you; not graver, I could swear. No, ma chère cousine, yours was ever a nature to extract brightness from what had been gloom to others. What a happy inspiration was it of that good Monsieur Carew to relieve the darkness of his native climate by such brilliancy! “'Still, how many sacrifices must this banishment have cost you! Do not deny it, Fifine. If you be not very much in love, this desolation must be a heavy infliction. I have just been looking at the map, and the whole island has an air of indescribable solitude and remoteness, and much further distant from realms of civilization than I fancied. You must be my guide, Fifine; I will accept of no other to all those wonderful sea-caves and coral grottoes which I hear so much of! What excursions am I already planning! what delicious hours, floating over the blue sea, beneath those gigantic cliffs that even in a woodcut look stupendous! And so you live almost entirely upon fish! I must teach your chef some Breton devices in cookery. My old tutor, who was a curé at Scamosse, taught me to dress soles “en gratin,” with two simple herbs to be found everywhere; so that, like Vincent de Paul, I shall be extending the blessings of cultivation in the realms of barbarism. I picture you strolling along the yellow beach, or standing storm-lashed on some lone rock, with your favorite pet seal at your feet.'” “Is the gentleman an idiot, or is he only ignorant?” broke in my father.